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To the Beauty of Birds

The Chukar Partridge Alectoris chukar, or simply chukar, is a Palearctic upland gamebird in the pheasant family Phasianidae. It has been considered to form a superspecies complex along with the rock partridge, Philby's partridge and Przevalski's partridge and treated in the past as conspecific particularly with the first.

This partridge has well marked black and white bars on the flanks and a black band running from the forehead across the eye and running down the head to form a necklace that encloses a white throat. The species has been introduced into many other places and feral populations have established themselves in parts of North America and New Zealand. This bird can be found in parts of the Middle East and temperate Asia.

It has a light brown back, grey breast, and buff belly. The shades vary across the various populations. The face is white with a black gorget. It has rufous-streaked flanks, red legs and coral red bill. Sexes are similar.

This partridge has its native range in Asia, including Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, along the inner ranges of the western Himalayas to Nepal.

It has been introduced widely as a game bird, and feral populations have become established in the United States (Rocky Mountains, Great Basin, high desert areas of California), Canada, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and Hawaii. Initial introductions into the US were from the nominate populations collected from Afghanistan and Nepal.

British sportsmen in India considered the chukar as good sport although their fast flight and ability to fly some distance after being shot made recovery of the birds difficult without retriever dogs.

As young chukars grow, and before flying for the first time, they utilize wing-assisted incline running as a transition to adult flight. This behavior is found in several bird species, but has been extensively studied in chukar chicks, as a model to explain the evolution of avian flight. Wikepedia

These photos were taken at the Orange County Zoo

Chukar

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